Rick Stevens wrote:
Beartooth wrote:
On Sun, 26 Apr 2009 07:56:51 -0500, Aaron Konstam wrote:
A question which appeared on fedora-list recently was how to remove U#W
from a USB drive. I did not see a resolution until the following web
link:
http://www.u3.com/uninstall
I've been trying to do that, and have a long thread going at
http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewforum.php?id=1
called "How to wipe thumbdrives??"
There is one post in that thread with a technique using dd; I
haven't tried it yet, but probably will.
I have a couple of those buggers as well. I think the dd you're
thinking of is something like:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M count=2048
or something like that...the idea being to write zeros to the entire
drive, wiping out its partition table and all.
It does NOT work on the SanDisk Cruzers. I ran the dd three times on
each, writing all 4GB of data to them (took forever!). Fired up fdisk
and it reported a gparted-type partition table on them. The partition
table should have been wiped out via the dd.
I then ran gparted itself. It did NOT complain about a missing
partition table (it should have), but it did say there were no defined
partitions. Whoopee. Yeah, no partitions, but a gparted-style
partition table that can't be done away with. Sheesh.
<snip>
If I could find non SanDisk Cruzer thumbdrives here, I'd never buy
another.
I now buy nothing but PNY or Apacer thumbdrives. If I'm in doubt and
if the package says that something's preloaded, I treat them like
toxic waste.
All I can say is that users should complain to the manufacturers and see
about getting refunds. For a $20 drive it doesn't seem worth the
effort. Enough complaints could be enough to get some success.
I have contacted Sandisk and said I won't purchase any products until I
see a way to remove this virus without having Windows.
Note that the U3 site does ask for a reason for removing the software.
I have complained a couple of times. There was even a thread on their
forum about a Linux tool. That was a waste of time.
If you search, there are U3 key loggers and other nasties available.
--
Robin Laing
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